Music and people hold my life together. I describe experiences, discoveries and insights, often connected with music and with teaching and playing piano. The blog is a way to stay in touch with friends, and may also be food for thought for anyone else, especially people connected with music and the piano/
Musik und Menschen halten mein Leben zusammen. Ich beschreibe Erfahrungen, Entdeckungen und Einsichten, oft in Zusammenhang mit dem Klavierspiel und dem Klavierunterricht.

Friday, September 5, 2014

Ethan Hawke’s Documentary of Seymour Bernstein, entitled SEYMOUR - AN INTRODUCTION is finished. It was selected to be shown at three of the world’s most prestigious film festivals, and had its premiere at the Telluride Film-Festival in Colorado last weekend. The audience reacted with so much enthusiasm that the festival board extended the screenings to three more days. The documentary is getting rave reviews, below are just a few of them. Check out the links!

IFC (International Film Center) has bought the rights to the film for the US and South America, so it will be shown in IFC movie theaters throughout the country. DVDs will also be made, so there will be plenty of opportunities to see the film, even if you don’t manage to get a ticket for the two showings at the Lincoln Center Film Festival in New York City at the end of this month

Should you happen to be in Toronto next week, you could try the Toronto Film Festival where the documentary will also be shown.

It’s been quite a journey to this point. As Seymour’s student, I got a glimpse of it from the sidelines, so to say. My e-mail program still has a mailbox that’s labelled Seymour, documentary and I realize that I was a member of the “Seymour-Bernstein-Documentary-Advisory-Board,” when this enterprise started.

For all I know, it began quite harmless. Seymour Bernstein and Ethan Hawke met at a dinner party, given by a mutual friend. They got involved in a conversation about the challenges and the rewards of life as an artist, and Ethan was deeply touched by Seymour’s views.

I can understand that. I’ll never forget the closing words Seymour spoke at a workshop in St. Paul, Minneapolis, where I met him for the first time: In practicing, you integrate your emotional, physical and intellectual responses to the music. The effort contributes to the integration of your personality and helps to fulfill the ultimate purpose of music: to help us become better people who lead better lives.

Prior to the workshop, I had read Seymour’s book “With your Own Two Hands-Self Discovery through Music” in Germany. It was inspiration enough to make the trip across the Atlantic for one day of workshops and lectures. When I inquired if anyone taught his approach in Germany, Seymour suggested I take a couple of lessons with him in New York. I wasn’t his only student to come for lessons from abroad, by the way. The farthest distance I’ve heard of is Tokyo.

The lessons with Seymour had a profound impact on my playing. One thing was certain: this had to go on! Over time, the commute from Germany became a bit strenuous. I found a job in the US, which allowed me to relocate, and continue my studies with Seymour living in the same time zone. I do play better when I’m not jet lagged, and I was lucky to move before prices for transatlantic flights went through the roof.

Ethan Hawke is a prominent actor and director, so piano lessons wouldn’t have done the trick for him. He found a different way to immerse himself in Seymour’s way of thinking, feeling and being: he suggested to make a documentary about Seymour. That was the time when the “advisory board” was formed. The start was a little rough; there were legal issues, and questions about funding. There were squabbles, skepticism, some people stepped down. Then, board members were asked to contribute interview questions and topics to cover in the documentary. That was pretty much all I did, but other people must have done a lot more, because the enterprise did get off the ground!

In the next part of the story, two people take on new roles: Ethan, the actor, directs a movie, and Seymour, the pianist, becomes an actor - even if it means to just play himself. “Seymour is going to be a movie star”, he told his students with a sparkle in his eyes and that chuckle, that indicates he’s having fun, while not taking himself all too seriously. At the beginning of my lesson, I always got the update how things were going. I bet we all did, and of course, we wanted to know. So, we heard about the film team invading the apartment, walks in the park with the camera watching, interviews over lunch, the pain of revisiting memories of the Korean War.

I got to be in the audience when Seymour’s master class was filmed at NYU, and when he played a solo recital at Steinway Hall, after taking a break of thirty-five years from the concert stage. A week before the event, I had an opera ticket and invited him to come along. We met in the foyer before the performance, and Seymour said:”I would have loved to take you to dinner, but I need every spare minute to practice.”

I didn’t meet Seymour during his career as a performer, so attending his recital was a special treat. I’ve heard him play at my lessons of course, and at master classes. Even in these work-settings, the beauty of his playing has moved me to tears more than once.

When Seymour played his recital, it was as if Steinway Hall became a sacred space. It’s the kind of playing that unites all people present in the spirit of the music. Every sound is preconceived in the mind of the performer, and shared through his hands on the keyboard.

At some point last year, we learnt that the shootings for the documentary were completed. Silence prevailed for a while, and a tinge of apprehension, if and when we were going to see the end-result of this. Finally, the day came when Ethan rented a movie theatre to show Seymour a preview. Seymour reported that it moved him to tears.

I can’t review a movie that I haven’t seen yet, but I would like to share a scene from one of Seymour’s workshops, where I was so fortunate to be present. It adds another vignette to the big picture of who this great teacher and musician is, and what he stands for.

There’s a photo in my studio from a seminar that Seymour gave in somewhere in the south. The schedule was grueling. Sessions began at nine in the morning and finished at six. Lunch break was one hour. They didn’t even give him time to go back to the hotel and get some rest.

On the day the picture was taken, everything was running late. The observers had gone home, even the director had left, but four students were still waiting their turn for a class. They were elementary school children ages six to ten. They looked forlorn on the stage. Their parents and I were the only people still present in the large auditorium.

The students were beginners, and not very talented. If Seymour had listened to their modest little pieces, and given each child a few encouraging comments, he could have been done and out of there in fifteen minutes. Nobody would have complained, I’m sure of that.

Instead, he gave them everything he had to give. Four chairs were pulled up by the piano. Everybody played their piece first, as in a concert. That way, they wouldn’t have to worry about performing any more and could pay attention to his comments on everybody’s playing afterwards.

It wasn’t all too fluent and completely devoid of expression. Artistry didn’t rank very high in their teacher’s list of priorities, that much was evident.

Seymour took the children back to a place before their first piano lesson. He had them look inside the piano, touch the strings with their fingers and feel the vibration. They observed how the hammer flies against the string. They figured out the difference in touch between a loud sound and a soft sound.

He worked with each child individually, keeping the others involved by asking questions. They were covering the basics: posture, hand position, the correct impulse to set the sound in motion. The children were with him, taking in every word he spoke, enchanted by his calm and focussed energy.

The photograph captures a look on Seymour’s face as if he were trying to get into the student’s mind: eyes lowered, concentrating on the child’s hand on the keyboard, lips slightly parted, giving instructions. He’s sitting on a piano bench at the lower end of the keyboard, teaching a chubby ten-year old, the clumsiest of the children.

I’d seen him work with a young woman in New York, who was preparing for the Chopin Competition in Warsaw. He gave her the same respect, patience and attention that he conveyed to the struggling beginner, who was trying to produce a single acceptable sound on the piano.

“Seymour, this was a highlight in the history of piano teaching,” I said to him after the students and parents had left.

“Whew, I’m completely spaced out,” he replied.

“I can see why,” I said, “and I can’t get over how you did this at the end of an endless, exhausting day.”

“How could I not,” he said, “I had to do it for the children. Did you see that boy, those awkward motions, and the hand position all wrong? If I don’t show him how to do it right, who is ever going to do it?”

I’d placed the photograph on the windowsill to remind me of that, whenever I got weary of teaching.

( The excerpt is taken from my upcoming memoir about my journey as a pianist and musician. The working title is: Learning to Listen)

“How am I?” Seymour wrote at the end of his report about Telluride.”I know that my life will change, but I also know that I won’t.”

I believe that, because being genuine means to stay true to yourself, no matter what happens around you. So, thank you, Seymour, for being who you are, and thank you, Ethan, for bringing this to the attention of a public that goes beyond the Seymour’s musical community of students, readers of his books, performers of his music, and audience members, who listen to it.

The fact that the documentary attracts the attention of the greater public shows that there is interest in the qualities that Seymour stands for: honesty, humility, and wisdom. And that means that there is hope for a better world.